Which current trainer has won the Grand National most often?

The record for training the most Grand National winners is currently held, jointly, by George Dockeray, Fred Rimmell and Donald ‘Ginger’ McCain, who all saddled four winners apiece. However, the current trainer who has won the Grand National most often is Gordon Elliott, who has, so far, saddled three winners.

Indeed, Elliott also holds the record for the youngest trainer to saddle a Grand National winner. He was just 29 – and, remarkably, yet to saddle a winner in his native Ireland – when he sent out Silver Birch to win the Aintree showpiece in 2007, just months after taking out a training licence. Elliott had to wait a few years for his next Grand National winner, but saddled winners two and three in rapid succession, courtesy of Tiger Roll in 2018 and 2019.

Of course, in recent months, Elliott has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. In March, 2021, he was found guilty of bring racing into disrepute, had his training licence suspended for six months and was fined €15,000 after a photograph of him sitting astride a dead horse went viral. To his credit, he accepted his punishment without appealing, saying, ‘I am paying a very heavy price for my error, but I have no complaints.’